These related cases raise dozens of
claims of illegal discrimination in the promotion process used
by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and the
Indianapolis Fire Department. The complaints are sprawling
and the procedural history is a bit convoluted; we have
simplified the presentation of the issues. A large group of black
police officers and firefighters sued the City of Indianapolis
alleging that the examination process it uses to rank candidates
for promotion in the police and fire departments has a disparate
impact on black candidates and is intentionally discriminatory.
They filed back-to-back lawsuits targeting promotion
decisions made in successive promotion cycles dating from
2002, but most of the challenged decisions were based on
scores generated from testing protocols administered by the
police department in 2008 and the fire department in 2007.

The plaintiffs in the first case are 36 black police officers and
firefighters who were passed over for promotions between
2007 and 2009 in favor of candidates who achieved higher
composite scores in the 2007 and 2008 testing sessions. The
plaintiffs amended their complaint once, and the City then
moved for partial judgment on the pleadings. The district court
granted the motion and dismissed many of the claims as either
time-barred or substantively flawed. In particular, the court
dismissed the disparate-impact claims because the amended
complaint alleged that the City’s promotion process was
intentionally biased rather than facially neutral.

The plaintiffs sought leave to amend their complaint again
and tendered a proposed second amended complaint, but the
district court denied the request on grounds of untimeliness
and futility. The disparate-treatment claims then proceeded to
summary judgment, and the court entered judgment for the
City because the plaintiffs had not produced any evidence that
using the test results to make promotions was a pretext for
discrimination. The plaintiffs appealed.

In the meantime, some of the plaintiffs—a group of
20 police officers—filed a second lawsuit alleging that they
were passed over for promotions again in 2010 and 2011. The
district court dismissed the new claims as barred by res
judicata because the more recent promotion decisions were
made from the same eligibility list generated by the testing
process that was at issue in the first case. The plaintiffs
appealed this decision as well.

We have consolidated the appeals for decision and now
affirm in both cases. The plaintiffs have focused most of their
appellate argument on claims of procedural error. They
contend that the district court erroneously applied summary judgment
standards at the pleadings stage and wrongly denied
their second motion to amend the complaint. We find no
procedural error. We also conclude that judgment for the City
was proper in both cases.

First, although the district court mistakenly assumed that
allegations of intentional discrimination necessarily defeat a
disparate-impact claim, here the disparate-impact claims fail in
any event because they are stated as legal conclusions, without
any factual content to support an inference that the City’s
examination procedures caused a disparate impact on black
applicants for promotion in the police or fire departments.
Second, the disparate-treatment claims lacked any evidentiary
support and were properly resolved in the City’s favor on
summary judgment. Finally, the claims in the second lawsuit
are precluded. Although the new complaint concerns a
different set of promotion decisions, it attacks the same
eligibility list that was at issue in the first case. The plaintiffs’
challenge to that testing process was fully and finally resolved
against them in the first suit, so their second suit against the
City is barred.